Briefkaart aan Frans Buffa en Zonen before 1876

This "Briefkaart aan Frans Buffa en Zonen" was made by Willem Maris. Note the seals, which strike me most profoundly. Consider the circle, an archetype found across epochs—from ancient sun worship to the Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail—a symbol of eternity and cyclical renewal. The postal seals, circular imprints of Amsterdam and the Netherlands, carry this weight. Like mandalas or alchemical diagrams, these seals evoke ideas of wholeness and cosmic order, hinting at the interconnectedness of time and place. Think how the act of sealing—a symbolic closure—appears in funerary art, marking a threshold between worlds. The placement of the seal is no accident: it is a potent symbol of the subconscious forces that compel our creative impulses. Thus, these seemingly mundane marks resonate with ancient, deeply embedded motifs. They invite us to ponder how symbols transform, carrying echoes of the past into the present.